Comments on: John Cochrane on Economic Methods http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/john-cochrane-on-economic-methods/ taking the most charitable view of those who disagree Mon, 21 Dec 2020 11:09:54 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.32 By: Handle http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/john-cochrane-on-economic-methods/#comment-471684 Sat, 11 Mar 2017 11:25:36 +0000 http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/?p=8397#comment-471684 Right. Doomsayer economists then should have been more humble, but Panglossian optimist economists now should also be more hesitant to assuage that all will be well.

]]> By: JK Brown http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/john-cochrane-on-economic-methods/#comment-471680 Sat, 11 Mar 2017 01:40:31 +0000 http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/?p=8397#comment-471680 Life expectancy in the late 40s mitigated those who would, or could, not adapt. Their sons picked up the new technology. Remember it had been a century of change. In 1800, a farmer from the 8th century would have easily felt at home on an American farm. Such was not true by 1900 and changed more rapidly after.

]]> By: Lord http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/john-cochrane-on-economic-methods/#comment-471676 Fri, 10 Mar 2017 20:44:24 +0000 http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/?p=8397#comment-471676 How about some humility over whether the future will be similar to the past? It might, but it might not, and it might not on its own. Even back then we were moving towards an 8 hour day.

]]> By: Tom DeMeo http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/john-cochrane-on-economic-methods/#comment-471673 Fri, 10 Mar 2017 19:11:33 +0000 http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/?p=8397#comment-471673 Cochrane didn’t quite get the humility lesson right.

As Collin alluded to, those farmers, horse shoers etc… may have figured out what to do… or maybe they didn’t. So maybe they weren’t “all” immiserized, but I suspect many of them were.

]]> By: collin http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/john-cochrane-on-economic-methods/#comment-471670 Fri, 10 Mar 2017 16:25:52 +0000 http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/?p=8397#comment-471670 1900 could have figured out what farmers, horse-shoers, ice deliverers, street-sweepers, and so forth would do when those jobs disappeared. The people involved did

Sure we talk about how great job creation was for 15, 20, 25, or even 32 years after 1900. What was the unemployment rate in 1932? 25%! And how did that turn out in the long run?

]]> By: Ben Kennedy http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/john-cochrane-on-economic-methods/#comment-471669 Fri, 10 Mar 2017 15:44:41 +0000 http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/?p=8397#comment-471669 Someone can’t handwave the digital divide and “average is over” away saying something like “but what about meat packers in thbe 19th centure”. Past performance does not necessarily predict future results, and true humility would acknowledge this. There are strong reasons to suspect that this era is indeed different

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